The suit from Gristedes owner and eccentric pretend mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis against Indian tribes selling tax-free cigarettes has been tossed out, so who wants to go in with us on a party bus and head out to Mastic? We don't care how many billionaire supermarket magnates starve for lack of our pre-tax dollars, we need cheap smokes. Let's pick up some tax-free financial news while we're there too and put Bloomberg outta business! [NYT]
When I read Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's deposition in one of his pending lawsuits with the founders of ConnectU, who claim he stole the idea for the social network from them, my first thought was, "Did anyone at Microsoft read these before investing $240 million in Facebook?" Zuckerberg is at his worst in these transcripts — by turns arrogant, befuddled, condescending, and obfuscating. And then it hit me.
There was a rumor floating around last year that Valley bad boy Sean Parker was forced out of startup Plaxo for a cocaine arrest. Turns out that rumor wasn't exactly true. According to a transcription of Mark Zuckerberg's deposition from the ConnectU v. Facebook case, it was Facebook, not Plaxo, which dropped Peter Thiel's protégé from its executive ranks after Parker was arrested for possession while at a house party. A house party Parker attended with a female Facebook employee who was also a Stanford undergrad at the time. Parker earlier told Valleywag that the arrest was "a misunderstanding." We'll say.
When we informed you yesterday of the lawsuit against the New York Post brought by Maximilia Cordero—the woman who might have been born a man (but she says not!) and who might have been raped by "billionaire financier" Jeffrey Epstein when she was underage—we apparently made some mistakes, according to her lawyer and live-in ex-boyfriend, William Unroch. Unroch wrote us yesterday to request a clarification, and his letter is posted below.
This week's New York brings Joe Hagan's second story this year about a wretched CBS News anchor, his first being that interminable cover piece on Katie Couric this summer. Today's slightly less endless article chronicles Hagan's talks with Dan Rather. Hagan doesn't uncover anything you don't already know about Rather's legal dispute with CBS or the documents scandal that started it all. He does, however, paint Rather as an around-the-bend loony toon, one of those old guys who madly scribbles notes to himself while muttering at the pigeons from his park bench.
Maximilia Cordero, alleged underaged sexual assault victim (who was allegedly born a man) of alleged billionaire pervert Jeffrey Epstein, is now suing the New York Post, according to Radar, for allegedly smearing her and not disclosing after their countless quotes from Epstein flack Howard Rubenstein that he is also the New York Post's publicist. Epstein, former alleged Radar investor, allegedly raped Maximila "Ava" Cordero and also allegedly wore lipstick and asked to be called "Janice."
Talk about spoilers. Bloomberg News reports that Judge Jeremy Fogel has dismissed a lawsuit claiming Apple CEO Steve Jobs and his executives lied to shareholders about backdating 6,428 stock-option grants issued from 1997 to 2002. With apologies to Fake Steve apologists, there's no longer any reason to read Dan Lyon's Options, a fictionalized account of the legal troubles Jobs faced over the backdating scandal. (Except for the fact that it's howlingly funny.) Even Lyons's ending is less of a letdown than this.
Former police commissioner, Judith Regan-sexer, conspirator, tax-evader and all-around public-defrauder Bernard Kerik may be slapped with a bias lawsuit from a former corrections officer who claims he was passed over for a promotion because he was too black and too strong. Though the guy bringing the suit might not be entirely reliable, considering a judge already dismissed a bunch of his claims! He'd previously complained that he "suffered retaliation after beating departmental charges that he had sexually harassed a female correction officer who had had an affair with Kerik" (which does sound like an equally believable reason for Bernie to snub him). Kerik is currently under indictment for all that stuff we mentioned in the first sentence besides sleeping with Judith Regan, which is not yet a federal offense.
[BIAS-SUIT WORRY FOR BERNIE [NYP]
Just like in last night's episode of The Office, Dan Rather and his ex-employer CBS have become bitter estranged lovers. In the latest installment of the former CBS Evening News anchor's battle with the network, CBS responded to the lawsuit Rather had filed on September 19th by asking a Manhattan judge to dismiss the case. Rather claims that "the network violated his contract by giving him too little to do after it forced him off the evening news in 2005." The network claims that "this lawsuit is a regrettable attempt by plaintiff Dan Rather to remain in the public eye, and to settle old scores and perceived slights, based on an array of far-fetched allegations." It's like the media version of the "You don't pay attention to me anymore/Girl, you crazy!" argument but with $70 million dollars at stake. Oh yeah, and a courtly old man's dignity, too!
A shareholder lawsuit filed by the New York City Employees' Retirement System against Apple for issuing backdated stock options to executives has been dismissed by a California judge. On what grounds? It's pretty difficult to claim injury when Apple's stock price has soared making the retirement fund more money. The judge is permitting NYCERS a chance to refile if they can show their organization actually incurred damages more severe than a papercut from opening those fat brokerage-account statements. [AppleInsider]
A source tips us off to how Pay By Touch CEO John Rogers celebrated his 40th birthday at the office. "They had a cake decorated with '240 by 40,' which meant $240 million raised by the time he was 40. The guy is a serious egomaniac." An egomaniac whose company faced legal trouble almost since its formation. If you're the sort who slows down to check out the wreck on the other side of the road, here's the whole sordid history, culled from mountains of legal filings.
Less than a week after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was bitchslapped on Capitol Hill, his company has settled with the families of Chinese writers who were jailed in China. Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning were imprisoned based partly on documents Yahoo says it was "legally required" to hand over. Settlement terms were not disclosed. Yahoo will start a fund to provide "humanitarian relief" to dissidents and their families. Reportedly, one part of the settlement stipulates that Yahoo must lobby the Chinese government to release the two journalists. Right. Like Yahoo's boys in Beijing will have more success swaying Communist hardliners than Yahoo's D.C. reps had in avoiding this embarrassing debacle in the first place.
From the mailbag: "at Milberg Weiss, Judith Regan has just filed a defamation lawsuit against Harper Collins, NewsCorp. and Jane Friedman." Looks like Judith is making good on the promise she made back in January, getting it in under the wire before the statute of limitations ran out. Brace for crazy!
Andrew Trees—the teacher fired from Riverdale's tony Horace Mann School in January and the author of Academy X, a novel satirizing life inside an elite private school very much like Horace Mann!— filed suit today in Bronx County's New York State Supreme Court. He charges the school with breach of contract and defamation. Trees has been awful quiet since his firing—now we know why!
The largest advertising company of Japan was involved into huge sexual scandal. The former creative director of its U.S. arm accused it of pressing him to visit a brothel and engaging in engage in other sexually explicit activities on company outings and said he was fired because of complaint.
Bernie Kerik—Rudy's ultimate bro, former New York police commish, quickly-withdrawn nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security, baldie, sexer-of-Judith Regan at a free Ground Zero apartment, former Interim Minister of Interior of Iraq (we always forget that one), and all-around mobbed-up creep—is apparently evading more than just taxes. His lawyers are suing him for $200,000 in unpaid legal bills! Soon he will hire super-publicist Ronn Torossian and we can all watch him on Fox even more often.
Yesterday and over the weekend, we revealed that Facebook employees check out user profiles and activity for lunch-time giggles and to help them get laid. We also reported on a tipster who told us about a Facebook employee who allegedly looked up a user's password, logged into her account, and changed her profile picture to a graphic image. What does it add up to for Facebook and its privacy-violating employees? Potentially, a barrelful of legal trouble.
Apparently Maximilia "Ava" Cordero, formerly Maximillian, who has claimed that maybe-millionaire money-manager Jeffrey Epstein had sex with her when she was (by New York law) underage but after she became a woman, which is very tricky, has had her lawyer-lover amend her complaint! It's pretty out there: "Epstein suddenly went into the bathroom and came out several minutes later wearing red lipstick and wearing a matted red wig. He said to plaintiff 'Call me Janice'."
